>> administration has been planning for many years on building a new facility for the

chinese community. without this legislation, the planning code would not allow us to build a new hospital, right here on this site. it is our dream to have something to continue on for our future. but now, our dream is becoming a reality. i would like to bring up the one supporter, the friend, who helped us, the organization and the project, the mayor of san francisco ed lee. [ applause ] >> thank you, brend brenda. good morning, everyone, welcome to the chinese center, where the hospital has been since the late 1800s. this is history for all of us. it is history for our city. and those of you who know about that history, know that chinese

hospice was built in a time when immigrants came here and faced discrimination. they faced a whole lot of barriers. they couldn't buy property. they couldn't get healthcare to people that were working in the gold mines and on the rail roads. and this is something that many generations of immigrants to come to this country have learned about, even in a wonderful city, and ininclusive city like san francisco. so it is in the backdrop that all of us have come together to support moderization of our central healthcare system. and we know how valuable the chinese hospital has been to this community. but now, today, it is more valuable not just for people who live in china town, it is an extremely valuable center where all of the doctors have come and the clinicians and the wonderful service to come here

throughout san francisco are, whether it is in the richmond, or the sunset, or the bay view or visitation valley as well as here in china town. i want to thank the leadership of the chinese hospital, their board of trustees. i know that james has been leading this effort and rose pack has been leading this effort for so many years. it has been my personal pleasure to have contributed to the way that i have felt comfortable with, which is the annual golf tournament at the olympic club. but we have made that and we transitioned that to something that started out, rose, when we started some 18 years ago, some $20,000 contribution, to now, and just in a few weeks, $650,000 a year to help rebuild this chinese hospital, and make sure that it stands with generations to come. but also, the board of trustees working with the community,

working with our superviserers and the communities that are represented here today and their wonderful contributions, $10,000, $20,000, $100,000, here. the family associations have been wonderful because they know that history as well. and they want to make sure that generations to come benefits from our hospital. we have been constantly doing it beyond just the golf tournaments. we have to raise some, serious, serious money, $150 million is the total cost. and we still have some $60, to $65 million left as james keeps reminding me. it never ends, also our community evolves. there is more immigrants coming. there is more needs. our population of our seniors are growing. our families are growing. and we need that medical help and medical attention. and they %qzwcl÷have had a wond creation of the community healthcare system as well.

they rolled that out to, again, enroll more people in the healthy san francisco, and with all of the wonderful doctors and i know that i see a lot of them here today. they are enthusiastic about this renovation and this seismic rebuild as we are. because they have the opportunity to serve even more clientele for our communities. i want to personally thank our superviors. david shew. the district supervisor here as well as eric marr because they understood when we talked to the hospital and the board of trustees, how we needed to really fast-track this to the board and get these approvals on. because seismic upgrades, it is all about beating the event. it is all about building this hospital before the events come, and there will be some forced effort to... that might cause us even more damage and

more threat to our own health. now i want to thank brenda and her leadership at the hospital because she has been steadfast in making sure that she has got a team that delivers on both the economics of it and working with james and the board of trustees to make sure that they have experts on the design and the engineering of this, to make sure that the footprint can accommodate the build-out. and we have had to have very good conversations with the planning department to get this to as well. so the whole team effort, in putting this forth, and making sure that once they got the planning approval, that the board acted responsibly and they have. and so i want to thank everybody for all of their roles from the community, doctors, to our seniors, and their help to the advocates, and to the chinese chamber and the board of trustee and their advocacy. to make sure that we have done

it right. and we have done it right. and that is what brings everybody out here today to celebrate this wonderful opportunity to kick off, the rebuild of an important institute not just for china town but for san francisco. it has been fast-tracked through the board with all of their approvals. >> are we ready? >> [ applause ] >> all right. >> even though the mayor has thanked everybody that we are going to thank, thanks to him. we are going to have the president of the board, but also our district supervisor, david shew. >> good morning, what a glorious day for china town, for the chinese community and for san francisco. today is a true celebration of our history, of our community,

and of healthcare. history, the mayor talked about the fact that in 1899, imagine, over 100 years ago, the disspensory sat here and over the years of the decades this hospital has helped to celebrate our births, has helped to mourn our deaths, has helped our community through our triumphs and our challenge and our obstacles. our community, i want to thank all of you for coming together. it takes a village to rebuild a hospital. and it has been an honor, i know for my colleague supervisor marr and i to be chinese supervisors working with our first chinese mayor. working with our chinese hospital of board of trustees, with the chinese chamber, with our chinese family associations, with our chinese non-profit sector and our friends from throughout the world to rebuild this hospital. and then healthcare. i want to mention for a second, that i come from a family of

healthcare folks. my grandfather sold chinese herbs my brother is a physician, my brother is an actupuncturist. my mother says that becoming a politician i was a failure because i was supposed to be a doctor. you who are caring for the sick, you are doing the lord's work, for some, you are doing budah's work. i want to thank you for all that all of you have done to take care of the community well-being, of our healthcare and insuring not that we are rebuilding the hospital over 100 years, but we are building a hospital that is hopefully going to last another 100 years. congratulations. [ applause ] >> only two more speakers. as i stated. this is the dream for all of us. and i want to introduce the president of our board, james

hoe, who helped us guide our pathway to this dream. >> welcome, everyone, for coming. and i think really, the mayor, and of course, our president of the board has practically said everything. so what they haven't said is they are so modest about what they have done themselves. i think our mayor definitely has been working on this and helping us shepherd this through his staff and so on and without him we would not have been here today. more importantly the mayor has been working on this project for 18 years and more. it is not just a golf game, he is so modest about that. in every way he has been helping us and every time that he sees me, see anybody and see any of, how is the hospital coming? and his staff has really be hassled by him to help us out. >> thank you very much mayor, and thank you very much his staff and like i think that ken rich has been helping us a lot. and i really appreciate it. and of course, the board of

supervisors i talked to supervisor eric marr and he said that it is good that it got through the board of supervisors. >> we know that san francisco is hard to get these things through, and the reason that it got through and no opposition is because a lot of finesse. >> i want to thank a lot of my board and my staff and a lot of the china town community who has been helping us all along. and of course, especially mention has to go to rose, all of these years, without rose this particular building in 1970, would not have even been built, because of him, that was built. and now many years later, we are building this one. so i don't know, if she life another 100 years, it will be her again. okay? so, given that, i mean, i hope that she will live 100 more years. so, and for me, it is very gratifying because honestly, it is a promise that i made to my

grandmother since 1982, i started on the board of this hospital. she passed away here. and i told her, and she said, she said son, you may not know how important these hospitals are to people like us, who doesn't speak the language, who are very culturally, you know, specific, and could you help make sure this hospital can endure and go into the future generations helping people like us? and so for me, i hope this is the beginning that we will get a good hospital. thank you very much for coming. i appreciate all of you for coming here today. [ applause ] >> and finally, our community champion, the person who is raising funds to build the brand new over 100 square foot hospital, rose pat. [ applause ] >> good morning. it is very emotional for me to

stand here today. this hospital changed my life. in a way that nobody really could understand. i was a reporter for the chronicle, and i got a call from steven fong here who was then the chair of the board of trustees. he said, you know, we ran into some problem with the chinese hospital. and our board would like to talk to you. so i said, well, i'm at work, you know? after 5:00 i will meet you at uncles for coffee. and so i met at uncle with him and several board members, and also a physician who is not here today and i wish i had remembered to bring him out, dr. roland low. >> so they told me that the

state health, you know, services have are going to shut them down and that was a friday. and by tuesday, they have to relocate all of the patients because this hospital building does not conform to the fire code of those days. and i said what? he says, our doorway is too narrow. our staircase is too narrow. and because they have sent notices to the administrator and who said he couldn't fix it, so he neglected it, but any way, the end of the story was they had five working days to move and shut the hospital. and what could be done about it? i said, shutting the hospital? and i said, who told you that? and so they gave me all of the

paperwork from the state. so i took one look and i said, let me think about it. so i thought about it on friday and i said, who the hell are those bureau crats telling us to shut down a hospital that is so vital to the community? so very long story short. i decided to organization the community and so instead in the following tuesday, the hospital had to have a plan to tell them how we are shutting it down, and relocating all of the patients. i have every bureaucrat that dotted and signed on the line facing us, facing the community and i demanded that they answer how they are going to help the patients by shutting down the

hospital. so instead of us telling them what we plan to do, i reversed the role and had them tell us how they are going to help us resolve the problem. and that was how i learned to organize the community and use the political power of elected officials. at that point, i had leo mccarthy who was the speaker at that time of the assembly because it belonged to the state. and then they told me, you know, since we are building the next building with the hill burton grant from the federal government for an out-patient facility, and i said, yeah, very nice. we are building a clinic, but they are shutting down our main hospital. so three years up and down the state.

they changed the legislation and grandfather clause, the hospital to be exempted from those requirements, changed the federal law, and moved this building from a clinic and put the hospital in. we are literally already have the building and just forced the hospital in and i keep on thinking, that is, you know, somebody willie brown's shoes that he had a nice pair of shoes he didn't wear, except for church every sunday. one day he couldn't fit the shoe, you know? that was the only pair of shoe he had. so, he said, rose, i just shoved my foot into the shoe, even though it did not quite fit. but it looked nice when i was sitting down. so that is exactly what we did with the clinic next door. it didn't fit, it was not built

for a hospital. but we just jammed everything in to make it work. and behold, 30 years later, now we have to build a new one because of new regulations and new laws. but anyway, that changed my whole life, my relationship with the community, and respect for some of our family associations, of what they have accomplished before us. so this is where we are at. and what we are doing is very small compared to what they had to do years ago when the condition was not so good, when we were discriminated against. you couldn't even go across the street here without being beaten up just three blocks down, you know? and so, it is very gratifying

for me today. we definitely need the money. it is not as big as you think we need. i did arithmatic. it is $36 million more only as of date that we need. mayor. and even though we took out the bigger loan than we actually need, but it is $36 million. so all of your family associations, i'm still coming after you, some of you have given, but some of you have given too little. and then all of you, you think that you are here, ha, ha, ha. but you will all be working to close the gap. so lanar is here, you know, i need more than $25,000 from you cofy, i need $25 million from you. so when you borrow the money from the chinese government, when they buy, you know, invest in your program, you can tact

along a few more million for us. but anyway that is the whole trick. thank you very much. i won't take your time. [ applause ] >> and now signing of the legislation, mayor? >> are we ready? >> yes, we are ready.

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